Taylor Swift: What is stopping big acts from playing Belfast?

Taylor Swift will perform in Dublin but not Belfast

It's been a long time coming but Taylor Swift is bringing her much-anticipated Eras Tour to Dublin in 2024.

Swifties battled through a stressful day on Thursday to snatch the final tickets for the Aviva Stadium gigs.

But many were left disappointed after tickets sold out over three sale windows, leaving only VIP packages available.

High ticket demand and a dedicated fanbase begs the question: Could Taylor Swift have played in Northern Ireland?

Belfast hosted MTV's European Music Awards back in 2011 and Londonderry's Ebrington Square was the stage for Radio 1's Big Weekend in 2013.

However, Belfast missed out on hosting Europe's biggest show, Eurovision, partly due to the SSE Arena's capacity.

Aisling Willighan, 26, has been a Swiftie - the term used by dedicated Taylor Swift fans - since the singer's debut album was released in 2006.

She and a group of friends registered for every fan sale for the UK and Europe legs of the Eras Tour, but only ended up with one code - which was required to purchase tickets.

Through a friend they ended up getting tickets for London, having to fork out for the cheapest VIP package available.

Aisling will be travelling with a group of friends to see Taylor Swift in London on the Eras Tour

Aisling said she always ended up travelling to see artists she liked because they did not play in Belfast.

"I think more people would probably travel to gigs here if we had a stadium big enough," she told BBC News NI.

"There is a culture of music and it's lovely to see that in the likes of The Limelight, which hosts smaller gigs. But for bigger artists we just don't have the infrastructure."

She is thankful to be going to see Taylor Swift live but disappointed it will not benefit the Belfast economy.

"To be honest, I would rather spend the money that I'm going to spend on a hotel and drinks and transport in my own country," she said.

A report found "music tourists" - people who specifically travel to another city or town for a performance or festival - contributed £136m to the Northern Ireland economy in 2022.

'No big artists will come here'

Sarah-Lou McGrath, 31, will also be heading to see Taylor Swift in London after a friend nabbed tickets.

"I find, as a lot of Swifties do, Taylor's music helps you through things… I had invested a lot of my emotional happiness into getting these tickets," she confessed.

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"Belfast doesn't have anything remotely near a stadium that could even hold a concert like that, which precludes us from any sort of music act," she said.

"No big artists are ever going to come here because they just won't make any money from it.

"If you're Irish and you won't travel, you're stuck - you have these three dates [in Dublin] and that is it."

Ellie McGuigan heads up Queen's University's Taylor Swift society and is looking forward to singing along to some of the Grammy Award-winning artist's biggest hits in Dublin.

She comes from Newry near the Irish border and so both Belfast and Dublin are equally convenient, but recognises everyone isn't so lucky.

Music fan Ellie McGuigan has the benefit of living between Belfast and Dublin

"In recent years, Belfast and Northern Ireland have missed out on amazing concert opportunities just because we don't have the facilities to be able to do it," she said.

"So many of my mates are travelling from Antrim, Ballymena - all that direction - down to see Taylor next year and it is quite frustrating for them because they're not in the same decent location as me… it could be an extra hour and a half or more travelling."

Touring costs

Joe Dougan is the man behind some of Belfast's biggest music events, such as Belsonic and Emerge.

He doesn't think a lack of infrastructure is to blame, but rather the costs associated to getting to Ireland to tour.

"It's so much more expensive to get a ferry over; it's so much more expensive to run the fees for all the staff," he explained.

"If you had the opportunity to either play Dublin and Belfast, or stay in the mainland and add a show in Edinburgh, Liverpool, Bristol or Birmingham, these huge markets that are way bigger than Belfast, you'd just do that instead."

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Jim Clarke, senior operations manager at Aiken Promotions, said that for emerging artists, Belfast is just as good as anywhere else.

However, he added there's a "lot that can be done and a lot more that should be done" to develop the city's potential for hosting music's megastars.

Joe Dougan brought the likes of Tom Jones and Lizzo to Belfast's Ormeau Park in June

Jon Collins, CEO of LIVE, a live music industry lobbying body, echoed the pressures artists and their crews face with rising touring costs, and VAT rates on tickets.

This often leads to international artists adding fewer tour dates, or skipping cities entirely, with the expectation that fans will travel.

"What might have previously been a 12-day tour is now six," he said.

"Honestly, it's likely to be one night in London, one in Manchester and a couple elsewhere because it's just that much more expensive for people to be on the road now.

"I think particularly for Aberdeen and Belfast, it's just the additional cost of getting there and when the cost of moving anything anywhere has soared the way it has, that's just another barrier to getting people to come across to play in Northern Ireland."

Taylor Swift may have no plans to play in Belfast, a designated Unesco City of Music, anytime soon but artists will continue to return for some of the world's most renowned audiences.